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Monday Lecture: It’s not about the Money

Professor Avner Offer lectures on the “The Economy of Regard“


On Monday, 24 October 2011, Professor Avner Offer (Oxford) gives a talk on “The Economy of Regard: How Reciprocity has Kept Markets at Bay since the 18th Century” at the Centre for British Studies. Everybody is welcome to attend.


Monday Lectures
Professor Avner Offer: “The Economy of Regard“


on 24 October 2011, 5 pm
Centre for British Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Mohrenstrasse 60, 10117 Berlin


Reciprocal exchange pervades modern societies and reciprocity is driven by the pursuit of ’regard’. Money is avoided in regard exchanges, because it is impersonal. Instead, regard signals are embodied in goods, in services, or in time (attention). Reciprocal exchange persists in family formation, in intergenerational transfers, in labour markets, in agriculture, the professions, in marketing, entrepreneurship, and also in corruption and crime.

In his lecture, Avner Offer will explain the concept of reciprocal exchange and how these exchanges are constrained by time and psychic energy, but valued more than the pseudo-regard that can be purchased in markets.

Avner Offer is Chichele Professor of Economic History at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of All Souls College and of the British Academy. He has worked and published on a variety of topics including the economics of war, consumption and the quality of life as well as The Challenge of Affluence: Self-control and Well-Being in the United States and Germany since 1945 (OUP, 2006).
 


FURTHER INFORMATION

Sandra Müller
Centre for British Studies
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Unter den Linden 6
10099 Berlin
Phone: +49 30 2093-99043
Email: sandra.o.mueller@staff.hu-berlin.de